Patching Things Up
by Little Miss Maybe
Summary: To say that Masamune was self-conscious about his eye - or lack thereof - was a little misleading. He was certainly conscious about it, but it was more a source of pride than anything else. (Written for the prompt "kiss on the eyelid")


To say that Masamune was self-conscious about his eye - or lack thereof - was a little misleading. He was certainly _conscious_ about it, but it was more a source of pride than anything else.

"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, see," he explained with a sharp-toothed grin when one of his subordinates was brave enough to ask about his eyepatch. "People see it and they know I've been through some real shit. But I'm still kicking so I'm stronger than what I've faced. People see it and they fear it."

But no matter how much weight he put into it as an intimidation tactic, it did nothing to change the fact that he was missing an eye and it wasn't the most aesthetically pleasing sight in the world. The eyelid had been stitched shut, at least, but it wasn't a neat job - the eye itself had been removed when he was in the throes of sickness and the fever had made discipline impossible. He couldn't remember whether the eye had really needed to be removed immediately or if his delirium had led him to insist on it, but either way, the stitching was sloppy at best.

He didn't care. Or, he tried not to care. He slapped an eyepatch over it and called it good. Eyepatches were menacing. He could work with that. He had no depth-perception, had to turn to see his right side, but it was okay. He would _make_ it work.

Sometimes he spent hours just staring at the grisly skin in the mirror. Sometimes he couldn't get out of bed without the eyepatch. But whatever his current level of self-confidence, it was his problem to deal with.

Until, like many things, Sanada Yukimura decided to make it his as well.

Usually the only time he removed the eyepatch was before bed for the sake of comfort. He didn't give it a second thought until he stumbled into his room with Yukimura's teeth in his neck as they clumsily tried to figure out what they were doing.

"Shit—" Masamune hissed. "Let go for a sec, I— _Fuck_."

Yukimura grinned, a spark of mischief in his eyes as his hands dipped down from where they had been resting on Masamune's lower back to tease at his ass. They fumbled around for several more minutes against the wall before they finally crumbled to the floor in a mess of harsh kisses and inept touches, still caught halfway between passion and antagonism.

At some point, their clothes were shed and thrown across the room in varying degrees of disregard. The problem of the eyepatch wasn't even in Masamune's brain, distracted as he was by Yukimura's _ridiculous_ mouth, until fingers were dancing across his forehead. He froze and then, without any kind of logical explanation, he had knocked Yukimura's hand away.

"Don't," he said in a rush, already breathless to begin with and barely intelligible at this point, "don't touch it."

Yukimura blinked once, gave him a wide-eyed look, blinked a second time. Then he nodded and didn't speak of it again.

Well, that was what Masamune had assumed would happen. Yukimura kept his mouth shut about it for the rest of that night but as soon as morning came, he was asking questions.

"Why did you deny me the honor of viewing you in your entirety?" was almost the first thing out of his mouth the next morning.

Bleary with sleep, Masamune shot him a halfhearted glare. "You're not entitled to see me," he replied, and maybe he was extra cranky because he was not a morning person, but Yukimura's phrasing rubbed him the wrong way.

Yukimura realized it too and winced. "I apologize - I did not intend to imply that I have any such right to your person. I am merely, ah, puzzled."

Masamune yawned, working out some of the tangles in his hair with his fingers absentmindedly. It was too early for this. "I don't owe you anything," he said, closing his good eye. "That includes explanations."

Once again, he thought that was the end of that conversation. Yukimura hadn't seemed pleased with the response, but he didn't look like he was going to argue.

But then their… _encounters_ began to pick up in frequency. It was like after the first few tastes, they had become addicted to each other and every time their eyes met, there was the spark of desire. It used to be that said desire was one for the purity of war. It now seemed to have been overwhelmed with something else.

Yukimura couldn't be subtle to save his life. Every single time they undressed and toppled over into bed, his fingers went to Masamune's eyepatch, cautious, wordlessly asking for permission that was never granted. Masamune knew what his rival wanted and he didn't understand himself why he was so against it.

Given the clumsiness of their relationship to begin with, he shouldn't have been surprised that the whole issue was put to rest because of an accident.

They weren't even doing anything serious - they had already finished with the sex and were lying next to each other, out of breath and quiet. Masamune was on his back with his hands folded under his head. Yukimura leaned over to kiss his nose and he lifted his head to meet the tiger in a proper embrace but his finger caught in the string, loosing his eyepatch and he _knew_ he should have put on his regular one, which could stay in place even in the midst of battle, but he hadn't been planning on doing anything that day so he had just thrown on his less heavy-duty but far more comfortable one and _of course_ this would happen, what was he thinking?

The eyepatch kept falling and he ducked his head as he sat up, hair falling over his face in a makeshift shield. He wasn't vulnerable or anything, he shouldn't have cared at all, but he _did_ and it was infuriating to hide away from his rival.

Yukimura was silent. Masamune couldn't see anything as he stared down at the blanket, frozen in place; one move and his eye would be visible.

But then Yukimura's fingers were parting his hair and he dared to glance up - the idiot had his _eyes closed_ and he seemed to be trying to press the eyepatch into place without looking.

Masamune suddenly felt like laughing. How could someone so gifted in battle be reduced to such a painfully honest lover, taking every little step to follow his wishes? He gently gripped Yukimura's searching wrist and moved it to the side, along with the eyepatch. He then held Yukimura's face in his hands and said what he never believed he would hear from his own mouth: "It doesn't matter. Open your eyes. Look at me."

And Yukimura obeyed. His breath caught as they watched each other and Masamune experienced a split-second of fear as the question _what if he thinks it's ugly_ struck him, but then Yukimura's hands were on his cheeks and his lips against his dead eyelid.

"You're beautiful," he heard Yukimura say and realized with a start that he had fallen in love.


End file.
